Tuesday, September 16, 2014

FW 1.26b --changing standards of justice--

1.26a:
Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap between antediluvious and annadominant the copyist...1.26b:
A scribicide then and there is led off under old's code with some fine covered by six marks...

VI.B6.183: 'I. Scand in moyenage killing = fine 4/6 / Eng 19th Cent steal 4/6 = death'
HOI 25: 'the law which laid down that killing should be atoned for by a fine, legally fixed — as was the usage in Ireland so long as the native law lasted... It was followed through all Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages, and although it has been described as barbarous, it is less so than the excessive use of capital punishment characteristic of English law, under which even in the nineteenth century pocket-picking or sheep-stealing was punishable with death'

(previously, a murderer had to pay a monetary fine for his crime; today, a thief stealing the same amount as the fine gets executed)

scribe-slayer

let off

with some fine covered by six marks or ninepince in metalmen

Mark: current and former coin of several countries

ninepence

VI.B16.67: 'metal men'

faces on coins

for killing the copyist

for the sake of his labour's dross

neighbor's

VI.B3.107: 'dross'
TFM 106: 'An Adjustment of Nature': 'And then Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm... And the Klondiker threw down his pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall half-way, and stared at her'

dross: dregs, refuse, impure matter

while it will be only now and again in our rear of o'er era,

our era

as an upshoot of military and civil engagements,

that a gynecure was let on to the scuffold for taking that same fine sum